Babienko AP English
Hamlet In-Class Essay Topics
Choose from one of the following topics. Prepare for this essay by carefully studying the play
with your chosen topic in mind; formulate possible thesis statements and identify appropriate
supporting evidence (apt references from the text!). You will not be permitted to use books or
notes when you write the essay, but you can and should prepare for it. You will have one
regular class period to complete the essay.
Option 1: Often a work of superior literature addresses the question, “What a piece of
work is man?” Write an essay explaining how Shakespeare uses Hamlet’s
thoughts and actions to create a view of the human condition, and explain
how this view contributes to the meaning of the work.
Option 2: In The Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche – writing about the similarities
between Hamlet and the Dionysian man - claims:
“…both have once looked truly into the essence of things, they have gained
knowledge, and nausea inhibits action; for their action could not change
anything in the eternal nature of things; they feel it to be ridiculous or
humiliating that they should be asked to set right a world that is out of joint.
Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion; that is the
doctrine of Hamlet, not the cheap wisdom of Jack the Dreamer who reflects
too much and, as it were, from an excess of possibilities does not get around
to action. Not reflection, no – true knowledge, an insight into the horrible
truth, outweighs any motive for action….”1
Drawing on Nietzsche’s work, critic Harold Bloom adds:
“The largest mistake we can make about the play, Hamlet, is to think that it is
the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind because (presumably)
he thinks too much....The fundamental fact about Hamlet is not that he thinks
too much, but that he thinks too well….Unable to rest in illusions of any kind,
he thinks his way through to the truth….”2
In a well-developed essay, discuss Nietzsche’s and Bloom’s statements with
regard to Hamlet; what is the relationship between knowledge, illusion, and
action in the play? What is the knowledge - the “horrible truth” - that
Hamlet possesses? What are the “veils of illusion” that Hamlet lacks?
1
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy (1872), tr. Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage,
1967, pp. 59-60.
2
Bloom, Harold. William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Chelsea House: Broomall, PA, 1996, p. 5.